Microsoft has been working hard to entice developers to make apps for its new Windows 8 computer operating system and its new smartphone platform, Windows Phone 8. One of the companies that Microsoft hoped would make official apps for its devices was Google, which owns popular e-mail services like Gmail and the cloud-based storage service Drive.

Google has now said that it has no plans to develop dedicated apps for Windows 8 or Windows Phone 8 for Gmail or Drive. In an interview with v3, Google Apps product management director Clay Bavor indicated that Google has chosen not to develop for the new Windows platforms due to a lack of interest from clients.

"We have no plans to build out Windows apps. We are very careful about where we invest and will go where the users are but they are not on Windows Phone or Windows 8," he said.

He adds, "If that changes, we would invest there, of course."

Bavor said that Google was committed to continually improving and updating the apps it offers for iOS and Android products.

Microsoft will not pull out of the market due to being snubbed by Google on 1 or 2 apps.

Google IS pulling out of the market on selected apps because the Microsoft phone does not need those particular Google apps.

Google is saying that due to *a lack of demand* for selected apps, those apps will not be developed. Google happily invested in apps where there was a demand and those apps are currently available for WP7 & WP8.

WP8 will not die because Microsoft users do not need Google apps. The Google apps though won't exist as long as the Microsoft users continue to not need them :D

Yes this is a blow to Google since people not using Google apps are not viewing Google ads.

I did a search, in market, on my WP7 phone for "google" and came up with just one official Google app, Google Search. There were no other official Google apps.

But granted that the WP market search engine is the worst the universe ever suffered, that isn't confidence of a lack of official Google apps. If there are others, a user will need to type in their full name precisely and without the slightest error for the search engine to find them.